By Bruce Chadwick
originally published: 01/10/2023
Will President Joe Biden “doowopify” the United States this week?
He will if he goes to the Doo Wop Project concert/show at 8 p.m. Saturday, January 14, at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, in Morristown, where five young men will “doowopify” the audience there with a show featuring the popular music of the 1950s through the early 1970s labeled The Doo Wop Project. “Someone in the show came up with that ‘doowopify’ slogan and we use it all the time. It’s catchy,” said Russell Fischer, one of the five singers in the show and a New Jersey native.
The group has “doowopified” thousands of people. Their next target will be a the folks in Morristown on Saturday.
The show is NOT what you’d expect.
“We’ve been on some stage or another for some time. This is out ninth year. People at first thought our crowds would be all people who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, but there are a lot of young people out there, and I mean YOUNG. They are exploring this doo wop music and their parents are remembering it. The two groups merge. For us on stage, it’s nice to see so many different people out there, with the common goal of enjoying this music.
The group started nearly a decade ago to do a few concerts. The dates grew and grew. They have hit just about every major American city plus numerous foreign cities, too. Crowds everywhere have been quite good.
“When you think about it, many successful American songs had their start in the doo wop tradition. Conversely, we take contemporary hits and spin them into doo wop songs, too. People of all ages enjoy that. “The music is timeless. Still, today, doo wop has a universal appeal.”
And, too, Fischer says, young people today listen to the music on places like tik tok and instagram, music venues never even dreamed about in the 1950s.
Who is the favorite singer that the band plays?
“All of them. There’s no favorite. The crowd loves them all,” said Fischer.
The five man band works harmoniously because they all started on Broadway shows about doo wop groups, such as Jersey Boys. “None of us specializes in one person, like Elvis. We each portray everybody. Fans hear the music of everybody, not just one artist. They like all the music because it’s doo wop. It is a style, a signature, like no other in U.S. history,” said the singer.
Example: Fischer says that Smokey Robinson, one of the great rock singers, used doo wop to signify his early music. It then reached more people – while coloring the musical history ‘50s and ’60 people loved so dearly. Doo Wop is a big umbrella for them all, added Fischer. It was the good times in their lies and at the same time you have young people remembering doo wop today – as part of their own good times. “You have older people at our shows remembering their good times and, with them, younger people remembering them like the older folds but recognizing that this is a very, very popular piece of music history, of American history.”
The music, though, has to biggest and most popular in the northeastern cities, right?
Wrong.
“I’ve got to say, after eight years with the Project, that the favorite area of the country is not New York and New Jersey and Boston and other northeastern cities, but the West;” said Fischer. “That is surprising, but true. Folks out west love Doo Wop.”
The band has been together for nine years now. How long can they keep doing these show and drawing such large crowds?
Fischer laughs.
“Let’s see, Doo Wop has been around for what, sixty years?” He slyly answers.
Mayo Performing Arts Center is located at 100 South Street in Morristown, New Jersey. Tickets are available for purchase online.
Bruce Chadwick worked for 23 years as an entertainment writer/critic for the New York Daily News. Later, he served as the arts and entertainment critic for the History News Network, a national online weekly magazine. Chadwick holds a Ph. D in History and Cultural Studies from Rutgers University. He has written 31 books on U.S. history and has lectured on history and culture around the world. He is a history professor at New Jersey City University.
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